Balder
by Alice Levander-Sara Sidle
Summary: Aka Grissom and the great roller coaster. Grissom and Sara take a trip to Sweden. Cross over with the character Alice Levander from the Swedish films about the detective Martin Beck.
1. Prologue

**_Disclaimer:_** I own nothing but Olivia!

_**Prologue**_

"Do you like riding roller coasters Sara?" Grissom asked one evening when he and Sara had just turned the light off and she lay curled up in his arms.

"Sometimes" she asked, thinking it was a strange question for him to ask at that moment. "Why do you wonder?"

"Because I think we should take a trip together. Just the two of us."

"Where to?"

"To Gothenburg in Sweden. They have this rollercoaster there."

Sara distanced herself from his arms and looked at him, not really believing what he had just said. "You're joking, right?!"

"No, I'm definitely not. I heard people talking about it on the internet and I'd love to try it. It's called Balder and it has been voted as the best wooden roller coaster in the world twice."

"Honey! I know you are really into roller coasters and you know I'd ride them with you whenever you want me to, but Sweden is really far away from here."

"I know that. That's one of the great things about it. Going somewhere for like 2 weeks. Where no one knows us. You know being able to kiss and cuddle in public for a change."

Sara sighed. He knew her to well. The fact that they had to keep their love secret was like a big lump in her chest. She hated the fact that when she finally got him to act on the fact that he had loved her all along, they couldn't show it to the world. That had actually been their first real argument.

Sara thought about it for a moment. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad going to Scandinavia. She had to remember to contact her old friend Alice Levander there.


	2. Chapter 1

Thank you so much for the reviews!

Peggy47: That's cool! I have like 5 minutes walk to Liseberg where Balder is.

_Ok.__ This chapter became pretty lame but I needed to introduce Alice Levander as well. I'm also looking for a Beta on this story. Please send me a message if you want to help me out with that. )_

Alice Levander is a character from a couple of Swedish film about the police Martin Beck. Unfortunately she got written out of the latest (and last) 8 films they made. No one knows why (Not even Malin Birgerson who plays her.) and the character they used instead are really boring… I was really sad because she was my favourite. Anyway, Alice has this "thing" going on with the character Gunvald Larsson and why she now is in Gothenburg is totally my view on what could have made her leave Stockholm.

_**Disclaimer:**_ I own none of the characters except Olivia and if no one else wants to use Alice, I hope I'm allowed "keeping her alive" by using her…

* * *

Sara sat down at the computer and logged into her email account. She had met Alice during the time she worked at the San Francisco crime lab and Alice had been sent there to help investigate when a Swedish business man and his family disappeared.

Alice was a Swedish cop and Sara and she had emailed regularly for about a year, telling each other about their lives and cases they worked. Then Sara had moved to Las Vegas and Alice to Stockholm and they hadn't been able to email each other as much as they had before from that time on.

Alice was one of the first people who knew about her feelings for Grissom. They had come to talk about it, when Alice had mentioned her problems with a guy called Gunvald. How he used to take her out to dinner and get her hopes up, only to have her disappointed when he drove her home and left her at the door.

Last email from Alice had been a very upset one. She had told Sara Gunvald had come to her one night after a hard case and things had just happened between them. She had said he had left her when she slept and when she asked her about it later that day, he had said it had been a mistake. The worst part of it was, that Alice had just found out that she was pregnant and needed to move because she was to scared to tell Gunvald the truth.

Sara thought about Grissom when she read this. It had been before he, as he said Catherine had once told him, pulled his head out of the microscope. Sara had been scared. What if Grissom would do the same thing if anything happened between them?

_I wonder if she had the __baby._ Sara thought as she opened a new email to write to her old friend.

_Alice,_

_Long time, no seen… I'm sorry! It has probably been my fault. I haven't really had the time lately. You know, there are lots of bad people who need my attention. People seem to think there aren't any laws at all here in "Sin City" as you might have guessed._

_The reason I write is actually that my boyfriend Gil and I are planning a trip to Sweden, so I was wondering if you could make some suggestions as to what we should see and do (Gil wants to ride the roller coaster Balder) and it would also be nice if you would recommend a nice hotel to stay at._

_Love,_

_Sara_

Alice Levander had just put her daughter Olivia to bed as she sank down at her computer to see if she had had any email. As usual Josef had tried to stay in touch. She smiled. She wanted to write back to him. Tell him everything about what had happened. And in a perfect world, she could. But this was far from a perfect world. What if Josef told **him** if she told Josef?

The other email, made her surprised. It had been a long time since she had heard from Sara Sidle. Olivia and her new work in Gothenburg had kept her busy the last three years.

She smiled as she read what her old friend had to tell her.

_Sara,_

_Don't say it was your fault! It's probably as much mine as it is yours. Work and Olivia keeps me busy all the time._

_It sounds great that you are planning a trip to Sweden. It would be nice to see you when you are here. As you might remember I moved away from Stockholm and I am actually living in Gothenburg at the moment. Balder is at the amusement park Liseberg over here and it's pretty close to where Olivia and I live. Why__ don't the two of you stay with us? We have a spare room so there is no problem at all. I'll be happy to show you around as well if you want. Just tell me when you'll be here._

_See you soon,_

_Alice_

Alice smiled as she reread the letter. She had suggested she would come visiting her a long time ago. Even though Alice wasn't really that into roller coasters, she was sure she would enjoy the visit anyway.

* * *

_Ok. I think I might have a little problem coming up... I didn't think of the fact that it might not be completely realistic if Olivia and Alice had conversations in English with each other... Any suggestions?_


	3. Chapter 2

Thanks again for the reviews to all of you and thanks for keeping my English good.

* * *

Grissom sat in his office surfing the net, as always trying to find out everything possible about Sweden and Gothenburg and of course Balder. He had said he needed to go to there because they had asked him to give a couple of lectures there. He knew Sara wanted to tell the truth, but she had agreed with him to say, she would take a vacation in London.

He heard a knock on the door and as he looked up, he saw Catherine standing in the doorway.

"Are you really going all the way to Sweden just to give some lectures?"

"Of course I am", Grissom said as if it was something he did every day. "Swedish was one of the leading countries in entomology during the 16th and 17th centuries actually. I hope to catch some books about Carl von Linné as I'm over there as well."

"Who?"

"The inventor of botany and taxonomy of course. He did some work with insects and spiders even if, he never became famous for it. By the way; did you know that Swedish is actually not officially the main language in Sweden?"

"No", Catherine sighed and rolled her eyes.

"The only country in which Swedish is officially one of the main language is Finland. Finnish though is impossible to understand for a Swede. But if you know Swedish you can actually understand Danish but with a little difficulty and almost all Norwegian. Only a few words and the pronunciation and spelling of some words are different. I think I need to talk to Greg about that…"

Catherine laughed and shook her head. When Grissom did research about something he did it thoroughly.

"Tell me something about Ikea! That's like the only thing I know about them. Or I know H&M is a Swedish company as well…"

"Well, the names of Ikea furniture is actually not weird. They have a system and it's words from Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish mainly. It's common first names, adjectives, and places in Scandinavia. Ingvar Kamprad, is dyslectic so he thought it would b easier to understand them that way. Each kind of the furniture have actually a theme too. And the biggest Ikea store in the world is outside of Stockholm, in a place called Kungens kurva."

Seeing Catherine's confused face as he tried to say it in Swedish, he quickly translated. "It's supposed to mean _the King's turn_."

"I think you have to work a little on your Swedish!"

"It's not such a big deal. They teach you English from the age of nine in all schools over there."

Catherine shook her head again and turned to leave.

"Can you tell Greg I want to see him if you can find him?"

"Sure!"

"Hej då Catherine!" Grissom said.He then turned his head down to the computer screen in front of him and read about Balder once again:

_G__öteborg, Sweden's Liseberg Park will be opening up a major new attraction in early 2003 that promises to put the Swedish theme park on the worldwide map for wooden coaster enthusiasts seeking out the best and newest ride experiences to be found. The park, currently home to several steel coasters including __HangOver__, the first ever Vekoma __Invertigo__, is adding __Balder__ a 118-foot high, 56-mile per hour wood-tracked scream machine that will call Liseberg home as the region's largest, fastest wooden rollercoaster. But it will also go down for one international record come Spring of 2003: the steepest-ever drop on a wooden coaster, with the wooden rails of a first descent reaching an unprecedented __seventy__ degrees on the way down. The coaster comes from Intamin AG, a well-experienced player in the art of steep drops on steel coasters, with a number of wooden coaster projects under their belt over the last few years as well, including Europe's largest woodie, __Colossos__ of Heide Park in Germany. With a ride time of just over two minutes and two thirty-passenger trains, Balder will shuffle 1,150 riders an hour through a 3,511-foot quadruple out & back layout of eight curves and twelve hills, not to mention ten pops of airtime during the ride. And at 100,000,000 SEK, or 9,400,00 dollars, Balder is the single largest ride investment ever made at Liseberg Park since initially opening in 1923. _

_Balder gets rolling out of its station as the ride begins with a rightward 180-degree bend to the lifthill. The five-car trainload makes its way to the crest of the lift, reaching 118 feet above the ground, and starts around a second bend to the right, this time just a few degrees shy of a U-turn. Once lined up with the first leg of the multi-out and back-style course, it's time to begin the plunge. The train starts down the first drop and the track veers downwards until riders are staring seemingly straight down, then the track levels back out, train speeding ahead at fifty-six miles an hour, and sends the ride back up into the sky. Over the top of a first camelback hill, the train is fed into the upper third portion of a triple-layer turnaround area and then encounters the second camelback, train hopping up into the sky and then heading back down. With another hill, Balder is sent into the second high-speed turnaround, curving around 200 degrees and beginning the second series of hops, with two more hill crests taking airtime enthusiasts into zero-g heaven and crossing underneath the first drop. Around the fifth turnaround curve, the coaster retraces the beginning area of the layout, next running parallel to the initial plunge with another pair of negative-g inducers and carving around another turnaround just below the fourth. The trainload of riders plunges into the bottom section of the wooden structure and navigates a fourth set of airtime hills while careening through a tunnel of wood, then banks through the final 180-plus-degree curve, with two final hops lifting riders from their seats and a small curve into the first brake run. A turn underneath the towering post-lift hill structure leads passengers into the final straightaway back to point A._

**

* * *

The facts about Balder is from I wanted him to read the description from Liseberg's official homepage ****http://www.liseberg.se****, but the English version was really lame compared to the Swedish which has 2 separate pages with just facts about Balder…**

**HangOver is not at Liseberg anymore by the way - the page is not updated... They had lots of problems with it and once it stopped with some people almost upside-down for like 2 hours. Now they have **_**Kanonen**_** instead. It's good, but not at all like Balder!**

**Next chapter is when he talks to Greg about Scandinavia**** and to the others as well. Don't worry! They will go to Sweden, but I want involve the other CSI-characters in the story first, because I love them all so much!**

**And I really hope it's just rumours that Sara will be killed. Over here we have only seen to Leaving Las Vegas, but I try my best to watch clips and read about the episodes on the internet. They have this annoying habit of only showing half the season and then have a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong summer break and show the rest of the season in the autumn.**


	4. Chapter 3

Thanks again for the reviews to all of you! I'm sorry it has been a while since I updated, but I'm out digging all week. I'm also still looking for a Beta.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anyone of them except Olivia!

_Text looking like this means it's Swedish._

---

Grissom looked up as he heard a knock on the door to his office

"Catherine told me, you wanted to see me", Greg said.

"Yes, I wanted to ask you a little about Scandinavia", Grissom answered and gestured for Greg to sit down in the chair on the opposite side of Grissom's desk.

Greg hesitated for a while.

"I won't put up with any more of those foot experiments you do."

Grissom smiled.

"It's nothing about you Greg, I promise. I just want to ask you since you talk so often about Pappa Olaf. Have you ever been to Scandinavia?"

"Yes, when I was ten I travelled through Norway, Denmark and Sweden with my mum, grandma Tove and Pappa Olaf."

"That's great! As you might have heard I'm going to Sweden."

"Oh! I know just the place for you then. In Stockholm, at Hagaparken there is this butterfly house called _Fjärilshuset_."

"Really?!"

"Yes, I remember Pappa Olaf saying something about a song called _Fjäril vingad syns på Haga_ that was written by a guy called Bellman in the 18th Century. I remember it mostly because Pappa Olaf told me Bellman mostly wrote songs about drunken people he met around Stockholm. Where in Sweden are you going to?"

"Gothenburg, but it seems as if I have to visit that butterfly house as well. I have to go to Stockholm anyway. The plane lands at Arlanda. Then they told me to take the train down to Gothenburg since it is cheaper and better for the environment."

"Yes, they usually take the trains more often than they take the plane. Maybe because it's not as big as the US. But as you said it is better for the environment and if I remember it correctly, the Scandinavian countries are much cleaner than most other places you could visit in Europe."

"How was that expression you told me once?"

"Som man reder så liger man?"

"Yes, that one… But it was Norwegian right?"

"Actually it's Swedish in the beginning and it's more common over there than in Norway I think. The Swedish version is: _Som man bäddar får man ligga_. Was that all?"

"Yes, thank you!"

When Greg had gone, Grissom picked up the phone and called the number he since a long time had memorised in his mind.

"Sidle"

"Hi honey! I will change the tickets so we will have a few days in Stockholm before we go to Gothenburg. Greg told me about this butterfly house I feel like checking out there."

He could hear Sara smile through the phone.

"You never ever change, do you?" she said and he could hear the love in her voice.

"No, but you still love me, right?"

"Of course! Eeeeeeeeeeeeh Brass is here. I need to go check on the body now. See you later!"

"Yes, love you!"

He hang up and sat for a while just looking at the phone. How come he missed her as soon as she wasn't in the same room as him?

---

Alice had just put Olivia down for the night. Olivia looked like a younger version of her mother. She had her brown hair and her big, round eyes. They where blue, but not her mother's dark blue but the ocean blue that her father's eyes were. Alice had just finished reading a chapter in _Mio min Mio_ to Olivia and now she was almost asleep. So Alice tucked her in and started singing the lullaby she always did at the same time she quietly stepped out of Olivia's nursery.

_Nu lilla humla_ (Now little bumblebee)

_Nu ska du sova_ (Now you'll sleep)

_Alla små ungar_ (All little children)

_I sina sängar_ (In their beds)

_Och deras mammor_ (And their mothers)

_Och deras pappor_ (And their fathers)

_Alla ska sova för nu är det natt_ (Everyone will sleep because now it's night time)

_Sova ska också vareviga katt_ (Every cat will also sleep)

_Kossor och kalvar_ (Cows and calfs)

_I sina hagar_ (in their meadows with fences)

_Alla små föl_ (All little foals)

_Och alla små grisar_ (and all little pigs)

_Alla kaniner_ (All rabbits)

_Alla små lamm_ (All little lambs)

_Nu ska de sova för nu är det natt_ (Now they will sleep because it's night time)

_Sova ska också vareviga katt _

_Skogar och hagar_ (Forests and meadows with fences)

_Åkrar och ängar_ (Fields and meadows without fences)

_Blommor och fåglar_ (flowers and birds)

_Och alla små kryp_ (and all little bugs)

_Allting som lever_ (All that's living)

_På hela jorden_ (on earth)

_Allting ska sova för nu är det natt_ (Everything will sleep because it's night time)

_Sova ska också vareviga katt_

Alice made sure Olivia was asleep before she closed the door and went to sit down on the couch in front of the TV. She turned on the news. It always made her sad, but there wasn't anything else on at that time she could watch.

Not long after that, the telephone rang and she got up from the couch to get it.

"Alice Levander?"

"Hi, it's Sara!"

Alice smiled at the familiar voice. It was a long time since they had talked.

"Hi! Are you coming next week like you said?"

"Yes, we will, but Grissom has changed his mind a little. He wants to go to Stockholm for a couple of days to visit some butterfly house there."

"I know where it is. Do you want me and Olivia to join you there? That makes it easier for me to pick up your train tickets as well and Olivia and I can come pick you up at Arlanda airport."

"That would be great! But isn't it to much trouble for you to come up there just for us?"

"No, I have my father living in Sigtuna which is really close to Arlanda and only 40 km away from Stockholm."

"Then it's settled! Kiss Olivia from me!"

"I will!"

When she had hung up, Alice began to think about what could happen if she took Olivia to Stockholm… Gunvald was still there as far as she knew. What if he would see them? She should contact him. She knew he probably had the right to know about his daughter. But what if he didn't want her? Alice could live with the fact that he didn't want to see her anymore, but what if he rejected Olivia as well? Could she live with that knowledge?

She shook her head, telling herself she didn't need to have those thoughts. Stockholm was a big city and there were not much risk they would run into each other. And if they did, then she should think about a way to handle the situation then.

- - -

**Mio min Mio (Mio my Mio) is a book by the famous Swedish children's writer Astrid Lindgren. She is mostly famous for the books about Pippi Longstocking!**

**The song Alice sings to Olivia is also made by Astrid Lindgren (music by Georg Riedel) and comes from the films made of the books about "Barnen i Bullerbyn" (The children of Noisy Village). I thought it fitted good in a story with Grissom and Sara since it contains bugs and animals and Grissom loves bugs and Sara loves animals. If you want to hear it look me up at You tube. My name there is Milanima. The video's name is Alla ska sova.**

(It's sad you don't know more about Astrid's work! – Most of her books are famous in other countries but not in the English speaking countries besides Pippi of course - I will tell you more about her in later chapters because she most play a big part of Olivia's childhood as she is to every Swedish child.)

_Gris_** in Swedish means **Pig.** It makes it very amusing reading the CSI books and most of the fanfictions when someone writes Grissom's nickname and spell it with just one S.**


End file.
